Lawsuit accuses OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, and SpaceXAI of colluding to slow AI

A lawsuit filed Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California accuses Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and SpaceXAI of violating federal antitrust laws by colluding to intentionally slow AI development, allegedly diminishing value for paid subscribers. The complaint centers on Sept. 12, when Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging collective industry efforts to curb rapid progress for safety, later publicly endorsed by Google DeepMind's Demis Hassabis, OpenAI's Sam Altman, and SpaceXAI's Elon Musk. Plaintiffs, four paid subscribers to services like ChatGPT and Claude, seek class-action status, claiming mutual pledges among rivals to slow timelines have an anticompetitive effect on consumers. Amodei acknowledged potential antitrust hurdles in his essay, suggesting U.S. government mediation "or at least enable" cross-lab discussions, possibly via a narrow waiver for safety conversations. Altman responded that OpenAI supports a federal safety framework but does not believe it needs to wait for an antitrust exemption to begin such work, while industry leaders have long discussed shared safety standards amid fears of AI escaping human control.